Region launches united approach to tackle AIDS

A conference to launch the Great Lakes Initiative against AIDS (GLIA) was opened in Rwanda on Tuesday by Prime Minister Pierre Celestin Rwigema, the Rwanda News Agency reported. The aim of the initiative, which has an office in Kigali, is to coordinate joint action by Rwanda, Burundi, Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania to control the spread and effects of the disease. Rwandan Minister for Health, Ezechias Rwabuhihi, told the meeting that the Great Lakes region had 4,326,000 people infected with the AIDS virus, while all the delegates agreed that the disease was a major threat to public health, the agency said. The initiative is launched in a week when World Bank economist Joseph Stiglitz, speaking at the launch of its World Development Indicators 1999, noted that the HIV/AIDS epidemic is having an enormous effect on life expectancy in Africa - with this one disease "having discernible effects on life expectancies of five, 10 years or more in the case of some particular countries".